Life, 1914-11-26 · page 13 of 44
Life — November 26, 1914 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical cartoon depicts a English village street in panic, with citizens fleeing and hiding from an approaching threat labeled "THE ZEPPELINS ARE COMING." Signs reading "GET A LOVE ON HENRY!" and "WHERE'S THE CELLAR DOOR?" indicate urgent evacuation. The satire targets WWI-era German zeppelin airship raids on Britain—a genuine terror that killed civilians. The accompanying text, "The Last State of Man," appears darkly ironic: citizens frantically trying to save themselves from aerial bombardment exemplifies humanity's desperate, often futile survival instincts. The accompanying sketch shows a mother sardonically telling her child to pray for "a rocking-horse" rather than actual safety, highlighting the grim helplessness of wartime civilian life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
wn WHERE'S THE CELLAR poor}-4 a. SSITHE ZEPPELIN: Are _comine! EVENING IN ENGLAND The Last State of Man ane save somebody from something now became the order of the day. The motto E pluribus unum was superseded by “ safety first”. Thus all was going so much better than even the most enthusiastic advocates of the new scheme could have wished, when an alarming situation arose. Everybody was being saved. The number of these was so great as to become overwhelming, and the increased population threatened to overthrow the State, It was practically impossible to be killed by a railroad train, run over by a motor or operated upon by a surgeon, not to mention being drowned from an excursion boat, suffocated in a mine or blown to pieces by a bomb. The stern necessity of dying a natural death was thus the common lot of humanity. Science acknowledged its defeat. The saddest part of the whole affair was that as literature, art, the drama and baseball had perished, and there was nothing left but the moving pictures and the monthly magazines, nobody wanted to live. “ MOTHER, I MAY AS WELL WARN YOU THAT I'M GOIN’ TO START PRAYIN’ FOR A ROCKING-HORSE, SO YOU BETTER START SAVIN’ UP” comicbooks.com